It was a day-long journey through rolling countryside and cropland to the Karnali valley where a walled compound offered wayfarers protection from the jungles most notorious predators after dark, offset by the possibility of seeing some of them in the day light, preferably at a safe distance. To set the stage and my priorities, ‘Alto!’ was the first ‘English’ that Jassa, my driver, was to learn, and he quickly found just how fast I’d be out the door if he wasn’t swift enough whenever a prime photo op presented itself. At least he proved cooperative, and on occasion even a little interested, though within a few days, after he established my morning/afternoon safari patterns, he began disappearing each night with my jeep, burning my gas. I couldn’t imagine where he went, our being so far from any socializing opportunities. After all, he was far too sophisticated for the local farmers - or their daughters for that matter – so I never was able to figure it out. But he was right there when I needed him every morning, so I let it slide.

The compound would do nicely as a base camp, even if the few scruffy backpackers made some breakfasts a bit more boisterous than I would have liked. At least they were  European, even if half my age, but equally enraptured by the local flora and fauna. And it was right on the edge of jungle fringing subsistence farmland and only a half-hour walk from the river that served as the border with India, where watching enterprising cattle smugglers making clandestine crossings each evening proved most entertaining. But mostly it offered a decent meal and a safe nocturnal heaven far superior to my hammock, which could hardly have been depended on to repel rapacious carnivores or pachyderm’s hell bent on ravaging the local crops.

The Karnali river seemed oversized and unexpectedly placid in the cool morning light, at least from where we launched the raft not far from the first bridge ever constructed over it just a year earlier. It was hard to believe this same river had swallowed up the lives of two world-class white water guides only a week before, but that was far upstream where it snaked around the highest mountains on earth, where this same unfathomable volume of liquid somehow squeezed between cliffs only a fifth as wide apart as it was down here. There was little chance we’d even encounter class III rapids on this short excursion, which worked for me, as my intention was to silently move in on my subjects with stealth, my longest lens perched on a monopod braced between my legs, making stability paramount. Should be some good hunting I thought - many animals are oblivious to unobtrusive floating objects, and the river was a big draw for them from miles around.

Often the shallows were so much so we had to get out and pull, there being four of us including a wandering young couple from Spain’s Basque country whom I took an instant liking to. Pinching every peso, central Asia had been a holy grail for them since graduating college just a few years before, and they were definitely going into debt on this half-year excursion which had included several months in India prior.

But Nepal was proving pricey compared to its super-impoverished neighbor, not that Nepal’s standard of living was anywhere near Europe’s: my guide, Sandar, related how eighteen family members shared the large mud brick home he had showcased for me days earlier - a barn, basically, where hay served as almost all the furniture and bedding, and a wood burning oven for both stove and heater. Plumbing and electricity?-unheard of luxuries. Home to eighteen people - incomprehensible to us Westerners. And he was the only one in the family with a regular paying job – the equivalent of maybe forty dollars a month. The rest of the family, including most the children, all worked in the fields. 

As the raft rounded a bend I was the first to spot a troupe of river otters lying flat on their backs basking in the morning sun like the idle rich at St. Tropez, their little heads popping up as we approached, then hopping up on their haunches, again in unison, then disappearing into the reeds that smothered the banks. I caught a series of shots of each human-like reaction of the endearing creatures, sorry to have frightened them off.

Further downstream, Emil – the young Spaniard fellow- thought he saw movement along a steep bank in the shoulder-high grass. The tributary was but fifty feet wide here and we were drifting directly toward the area of interest. All I thought I saw was a couple of prominent boulders until one of them suddenly turned and its thick, distinctly sectioned hide and arching horn morphed into a plated rhino – the largest super-exotic mammal I’d ever seen, and it was only 40 feet away and closing, forcing us to dig our paddles in to avoid inciting him. The raft slowed right as the immense beast caught wind of us. Thankfully, it either perceived no threat or was truly as near-sighted as they’re rumored to be, and I’m guessing the former. Not about to pass this up, I got gutsy enough for several shots - so close that some only included half his head in the frame - a squinting eye and a pulsing nostril, and that horn that could have easily impaled the raft. 

Days later Sandar led the way as we hiked along the same road Jassa and I often took by Jeep into the forest that eventually paralleled the river. Though I was quite familiar with the terrain, Sandar was my guide after all, so I let him. The jungle’s usual morning sounds trickled through from high overhead. We held out little hope of seeing any large species though if we were going to it would likely be this early in the day and, as always, I was just happy finding an abundance of colorful songbirds, some vultures and monkeys and being with a knowledgeable local who was as taken by it all as much as I was.

A faint, guttural growl became just perceptible as we continued on toward its apparent source. Sandar was certain it was a tiger, though at first I was skeptical, thinking this was an easy way he could at least claim we had ‘an encounter’ without anything interesting actually happening. But after a brief pause, the sound suddenly grew much more pronounced, its feel tangible, its reverberation threatening, and all doubt disappeared. Then, when we couldn’t have been more than a few hundred feet away, its volume and intervals stepped up a several more notches, effortlessly penetrating the thick foliage. Secretly, I began questioning the wisdom of continuing in its direction.

Then all of a sudden, silence.

We stopped dead in our tracks. The big cat was definitely on the move. A few seconds passed, each seeming an eternity. Sure enough, not a hundred feet in front of us a fully mature male Bengal tiger in all its legendary glory paced right out into the middle of the trail and paused, looking directly at us. This was way beyond spectacle - and this was way closer than I really cared to be. Almost instinctively my knife was drawn, slipping in a sweaty palm. The regal beast sized us up. Nobody moved a muscle. Should he have charged just then at least one of us wouldn’t have walked out of there that morning. But after a few seconds of stalemate he continued on, apparently unimpressed, vanishing into the brush. And that suited us all just fine. Drawing a collective breath, we looked at each other as if to confirm was that for real? 

After our heart rates had returned to normal, Sandar asked if I really intended to use the knife had the animal charged, whereupon I only half joked that I certainly did – to cut my own throat. 

Days earlier for my own edification I had inquired what the most prudent response should be in the unlikely, unenviable event one finds oneself pursued by a tiger. Sandar advised that if there are four or more of you together: bunch up and make all the noise you can. If there are less than that: try to find a tree you think you can climb that the tiger can’t – a method requiring formulaic, clear-headed observations and time-consuming calculations, if not trial and error, in which case one error was, statistically speaking, pretty much all you got. Given the singular absurdity of that suggestion, when a fellow traveler asked me that same question a few weeks later, I simply offered that the accepted protocol is to run off into the woods willy-nilly screaming something like ‘Hey, Moe! – Hey, Larry!’  No point in putting off the inevitable.

The Karnali valley seemed to awaken each pink dawn with the grace of a an unfolding flower, where views over cultivated acres encompassed numerous farms, their families getting a start on the day as smoke idled above distant hovels, kids pestered cattle out of their corrals and birdsong seemed to emanate from thin air. It was always damp but never really cold, and if it wasn’t for the fact that everyone living there had twelve or thirteen hours of work they had to put in, one could have had a glorious new day to look forward to in the best sense of the word.

Hardship in a backdrop of beauty - that was the reality constantly conflicting my emotions. I liked to think that my presence there was helping things a little, and in this case it almost certainly was. I had already made myself a promise to tip Sandar an amount equaling his usual month’s salary. After all, the few westerners who made it down this way were invariably cash-strapped Euro backpackers with miniscule budgets to manage. I, on the other hand, was probably pulling down more than every hard-working moax I’d met on this whole month-long excursion combined, so I had no excuses, actual or imagined. And no one was more deserving than Sandar, who showed up with a chipper attitude early each day, always quick with his little bird book whenever neither of us wasn’t sure just what that scissors-tail this or crested-whatever was, adding immensely to each sighting, cementing a shared sense of wonder. I seriously doubted I’d be in such a jovial mood after spending every night on a haystack with my entire extended family. The insights these people and their circumstances provided were why I always return from my travels a little wiser, a little more edified about what it is to be human, even if my emotions are laced with profound pity for some of those I’ve encountered. They validate on no uncertain terms the extreme range of conditions we are capable of acclimating to and the uncorrupted dignity that results from shear persistence.

Another week or so into the trip I had Jassa drop me off at a remote dry stream bed that led to the big river where fresh prints were everywhere, hoping to meet back up with him hours later, provided he didn’t forget where I was. Investigating some rustling in the brush, I was able to sneak up incredibly close to a troop of boars with many young who scattered like buck shot once they realized I was right there, then found the first of some alarmingly massive tiger prints that had the immediate effect of elevating my blood pressure like some illegal drug as my peripheral awareness approached paranoia. At first I considered heading in the opposite direction, but feared they might loop around on themselves anyway, in which case I could find myself facing destiny. The big feline may have been here last week or scared off by the jeep just minutes before – I had no way of telling, and I was not about to test the dubious escape tactics Sandar instructed me on earlier. I initially headed toward the most open portion of the river bed where at least nothing could just pounce on me from under cover, but after a few minutes frying under the noon sun reluctantly decided to take my chances under shade.

Maybe I was being overly-edgy. Maybe not: only a hundred feet outside the compound could be just as dangerous as being alone way out here - big cats had often been seen prowling that close to its gates. Several reliable sources had advised that just last year a leopard had gone on a month-long rampage targeting villagers in this valley and local authorities had no choice but to hunt it down and destroy it. None of its victims had been taken anywhere near the jungle. The lesson was clear; no matter where you are, if they want you bad enough they’ll come and get you. 

Daily discoveries never ended. A bridge crossing a tributary of the Karnali provided a superb vantage point from which to witness all kinds of river activity. I expected the abundance of bird life that proliferated there and was duly impressed when an adult female elephant lazily paced by on the levee’s edge, fowl scattering from the underbrush at her approach, but I couldn’t believe my luck upon sighting a reptile so rare I scarcely believed still existed, let alone that I had stumbled upon it; the elusive gavial – yet another super-exotic – an alligator sporting a preposterously long narrow snout which had evolved in response to its exclusive diet of fish. Almost a myth from my childhood, I had first encountered the species when I was around ten years-old at The Alligator Farm – a beloved, low-budget suburban reptile park ultimately destined for parking lot conversion. Long since then I was certain I’d read somewhere they’d been all but wiped-out by human population pressures, at least in India. Yet there it was, its disproportionate profile on full display, holding its own, bucking the odds, standing its ground.

During my last few days in the valley I offered my jeep in the services of a married couple - American scientists doing bird census work recently down from the Himalayas. They knew of a semi-secret valley where some of the regions rarest bird life might be found and my offer to take them there was an unexpected windfall they were profoundly grateful for. Sandar joined us of course, and was to everyone’s amazement except mine first to spot emerald green pigeons, iridescent humming birds, wild peacocks and many others, demonstrating the superiority of his on-the-job training and natural talents. The scientists asked if he’d be interested in a teaching post at Cornell.

Just before leaving the compound for the last time, I handed Sandar a couple of large Nepali bills, watching his perplexed look when I designated them for his younger brother in recognition of his minor role on a couple of our forays. Once he had pocketed them, I slapped a bulging envelope into his hand and shook the other good-bye with both of mine, wishing him a long life and good fortune. He deserved all he could get.

The Maya hotel deep in the bowels of back-street Katmandu was a perfumed garden behind a piss-wall. Once inside its chaffing gates, flowers blossomed behind ponds and bordered the winding paths that led to each of its few quaint rooms. From its rooftop on clear mornings Everest’s treacherous peak could be seen far beyond the city’s ramshackle skyline. The jovial innkeeper, a rotund, amiable enough chap, had been trained in hotel management in Munich, explaining his fastidious quirks that contrasted so sharply with the condescending casualness typical of Nepalis. 

His little helper thoroughly intrigued me. A blossoming girl/woman of 18 or so, possessed of such natural beauty I had to contain my propensity to flirt out of respect for her Buddhist sensibilities and because I couldn’t quite make out exactly what her relationship was with her boss. Turns out she was an orphan that the hotels’ owner had ‘taken in’ a few years earlier from the Himalayan foothill region. Seems her mother had died when she was but 10. A year or so later her father remarried, and apparently their new stepmother had no use for either her or her little sister. The both of them ended up literally out on the street and on their own - a practice the innkeeper confessed wasn’t all that uncommon in Nepal’s hinterlands; when a households’ income fed only so many mouths, personal politics could redefine families to a degree unimaginable to outsiders. Somewhere along the line the hotel owner’s wife had encountered the two in their deplorable predicament and decided on the spot something had to be done about it.  Assuming such responsibilities is a key tenet of Buddhist teachings, though how often practiced this magnanimously was hard to tell. It was a gracious gesture that would have no small bearing on these otherwise unfortunates, and I suspect that if the karma held out long enough, one day they in turn would perpetuate it with others in similar dire straits. Anyway, that’s how it suppose to work. 

Out on the raucous street on my last afternoon the young girl ran to catch up with the taxi collecting me for my departing flight, gently wrapping a white silk scarf around my neck in a ritual intended for those deemed worthy of good fortune. But she was quite embarrassed with my impetuous attempt at a parting hug. Once again, I had to remind myself where I was, and what such a display meant in this part of the world where not even married couples ever touch each other in public. 

A little over a week later, after tramping through central Thailand’s jungles, then dodging its sociopathic city drivers, it was time to head home, where my employer was preparing to relocate off-shore and the whole San Diego division was to be shuttered within months. I was already scheming how best to use the precious downtime on some extended excursion, but it was not to be. A good offer never even allowed me a single day off between jobs. But when the new position turned out to be a nightmare and yet another opportunity came along, I made my acceptance conditional on a three-week delay and took refuge in Anzo - Borrego’s vast desert solitude - long enough to purge my soul of civilization and to began formulating my final, grand bail out – the one I will never return from, the one where I intend to put down roots somewhere very deep in the real world – at least my idea of what the real world is. 

The following are John's previous articles for the magazine:

• Explorations In The Amazon Basin ~ Into The Unknown
• Adventures In Surinam ~ Into The Jungle
• More Adventures In Surinam ~ Explorations

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